Archive for the ‘Tom Thumb’ Category

I visited the Tom Thumb at Preston/Forest yesterday and noticed they had a few kitchen gadgets on clearance for 50-75% off, including a Salter Multi-weigh kitchen scale for $10 (I think) that Amazon.com sells for $19.95 and a Cuisipro stainless steel potato ricer for $15 that sells for $49.95 on Amazon.com.

I already have a kitchen scale and we can’t eat mashed potatoes, so no need for the ricer, but I thought this might be useful for someone else. Both have decent ratings on Amazon.com.

They also had some mugs and plates on clearance.

Not all Tom Thumbs have as an extensive kitchen tools/gadget section as this store does, but if your Tom Thumb/Safeway store sells kitchen tools, you might check to see what is on clearance.

Are you planning to attend any holiday cookie exchanges in the next few weeks? Or do you plan to give cookies as a gift this holiday season?

Through Tuesday, December 14, visit the Safeway family of Stores (which includes Dominick’s, Tom Thumb, Randalls, Vons, and Genuardi’s) to purchase any two participating Gladware products and get a free Betty Crocker Cookie Pouch while supplies last.

If you picked up a copy of the Safeway “Thanksgiving” $60 in coupons booklet, there is a $1.50/2 GladWare products coupon inside that you could use for this promotion. The booklet came out in early November, so chances are slim that you will find one if you haven’t already gotten it, but I have heard a few people have found them at select stores, so you never know.

We can no longer eat Betty Crocker cookie mixes (or any mixes for that matter), but I used to make their chocolate chip, chocolate oatmeal and sugar cookies pretty regularly. It was so easy to make great tasting cookies, but I never thought to take them to a new level like many of the recipes on BakeSweetMemories.com do. I’d love to try the Turtle Tassies. Yum!

And while you’re at the Bake Sweet Memories Website, play the instant win game for a chance to win free baking products from Betty Crocker. I played and won a coupon for a free pouch of Betty Crocker Cookie Mix that was loaded directly on my Tom Thumb shopper card. Maybe I’ll use it to add cookies to my daughter’s teacher gifts.

Rules:– Ends at 11:59 PM Central on Monday, December 27, 2010. I will use Random.org to select the winner.
– The winner will have 48 hours to respond to my email, or I will select a new winner.
– Giveaway is limited to United States residents.

Disclosure: Safeway, Betty Crocker, and Glad provided me with the gift card, information, and prize pack through MyBlogSpark, but I was not obligated to host the giveaway or post this information.

But the deal gets better! Follow these steps to get the toilet paper for $1.99 after coupons:

Grab a copy of the Tom Thumb ad when you enter the store. The Cottonelle coupon is on the back of the ad.

In front of the toilet paper display, you should see a Smart Source blinkie machine with $2.00/1 coupons. Grab two packages of Cottonelle Ultra 12 packs and two $2.00/1 coupons. Make sure you get the purple packages, because I didn’t realize it was only on the Ultra variety until I got to the checkout area.

You must purchase $10 worth of products to use the $4.99 in-ad Cottonelle coupon. Figure out what you want to buy to get to the $10 minimum to get the Cottonelle.

I purchased a few large Hass avocados. I also found some Glad storage bags on 75% off clearance in the back of the store for $1.25 each.

You can also get free Joint Juice this week using the $1.00/1 coupons from the 10/3 Smart Source insert.

If your store has a Finish Quantumatic display with a coupon tearpad, you could get two packages with the coupons for only $1.00. The coupons were gone on every display I spotted.

Buy 2 Finish Quantumatics – $5.00 each
Use two $3.00/1 tearpad coupons found on display (usually at end of an aisle). You may also be able to print coupons here, but I get an error saying my browser and Windows 7 are not supported.

When you buy two Finish Quantumatics, get a $3.00 Catalina coupon to use on your next Tom Thumb purchase (prints at register)

After you buy the Cottonelle, you will receive a $2.00 Catalina coupon (prints at the register so make sure you wait for it!) that you can use on your next Tom Thumb purchase. This makes the two 12 packs of Cottonelle Ultra Toilet Paper only $1.99 each after coupons.

These deals ends on Tuesday, October 19, so be sure to act quickly if you need to stock up on toilet paper or Finish Quantumatic!

Cheap Peaches & Nectarines
If you are looking for cheap US-grown peaches and nectarines, today is the last day to get them for $0.47/lb at Newflower Farmers Market. The store is located at 1800 N. Henderson Avenue, north of downtown Dallas. I purchased several pounds of their peaches a few days ago.

They are not nearly as good as the Texas-grown peaches I purchased at Central Market for $1.50/lb, but they’re fine for making peach sorbet and sauces!

Speaking of Texas-grown peaches, the man who did the Williams-Sonoma technique class last weekend raved about Ham Orchard peaches. My daughter and I are planning a trip to Terrell to check it out. I’ll let you know what we find!

Best Price on Organic Fuji Apples
I am only buying organic apples these days, and the prices usually range from $1.99-2.49/lb. I have found that my apple peeler/corer/slicer consistently works the best with Fuji apples and had been paying $2.49/lb for these apples at Whole Foods and Central Market.

Last week, I found that Super Target sells them for $1.99/lb! Target does not have a huge quantity of these apples, and I only found a few that I felt were still worth buying, but given the amount of apples I buy each week, a $0.50/lb savings is huge!

I use the apples to make applesauce (which we eat as is, and also in recipes) and baked apples. I have also started juicing apples since no commercial apple juices are “legal” on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

Have you heard? Roy’s Natural Market is closing in early August. The store is located at Preston/Royal in Dallas. From now until July 16, visit the store between 2-4PM to wish Roy a happy retirement, get discounts and register to win prizes.

I will be posting about my kale chip experiment soon. I have read and heard many good things about kale chips, so when I saw the organic kale is $1.50/bunch this week at New Flower Market, I decided to get some. I have two “recipes” – one that you can make in the oven and one that you can make in a dehydrator. I tried the oven method today and think I over oiled them, but some were good. I am going to try the dehydrator method on Sunday and will post a comparison with photos.

When another mother and I met with a Dallas-area Whole Foods store ambassador about food allergies a few weeks ago, she gave us a tour of the produce area. She told us about all the health benefits of kale (better than spinach, she said), and she gave us a small piece to try. It was interesting, but not something I would eat raw very regularly. The kale chips were much more tolerable. Best of all, my daughter LOVED them.

I price-checked produce at Sam’s Club this week to see if I could buy any of these items at a lower cost, but Sam’s was just as expensive or more expensive than the grocery stores! That is not always the case though. I am going to try to hit Sam’s and possibly Costco occasionally to see if buying in bulk will be cheaper. While I will not be covering the warehouse clubs’ prices regularly, I will post any deals I find there.

I am now trying to buy organic whenever possible. For example, I am only buying organic apples since I have read that apples are on the “dirty dozen” list of of produce where it makes the most sense to go organic. I figure if we’re going to do this diet to see if it helps my daughter’s health, then we might as well avoid eating those foods with higher concentrations of pesticide residues. I will include conventional and organic produce in the comparison chart so you can decide where to go based on your preferences. I will create three graphical icons to indicate if produce is:

– Organic
– Locally-grown (“Texas”)
– USA-grown

but for now I just used symbols in the spreadsheet (the symbol meanings are in the footer of each page).

Please keep in mind that stores do not always list the size of the produce. For example, avocados are usually “small” or “large” but the ads don’t always specify. So it will be difficult to know for sure which store has the best price. Whenever possible, I will check on sizes in person and will update the chart.

And last but not least, this is a work-in-progress. This week, I am posting just a PDF download of the chart. In future weeks, I will pull out the best deals and post a summary with a link to the full download.

Please let me know what you like or dislike about this format. And if you stop by a store and find additional produce on sale that is not advertised, please let me know and I will update this list. I plan to do similar comparisons for meat/seafood, nuts and dairy soon.

If you haven’t already snagged a free coupon from another blogger’s site for the new Yoplait Simply… Go-Gurt, here’s your chance to get one. The first 30 readers to complete the form will receive a coupon* in the mail for a free package. If you’re not one of the first 30, you can still download a $1.10/1 coupon.

I have not been able to find the new Simply… Go-Gurt yet, but I like that it does not include high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). We used to eat Yoplait’s regular yogurt frequently until we decided to give up HFCS, so I was glad to see Yoplait is not adding it to the Simply… Go-Gurt yogurt. There are also no artificial colors or flavors. It comes in two flavors, Strawberry and Mixed Berry.

Win a Prize Pack!
Want to win a Go-Gurt “Simplify Your Life” prize pack that includes a pocket Etch a Sketch, weekly planner and a seat back organizer? Just leave a comment below with which flavor of Simply… Go-Gurt you hope to try. I will select one winner from the comments below using Random.org on Wednesday, April 21 at 9PM Central. One comment per person, please.

*This coupon offer for free Simply… Go-Gurt is not valid in some states, including California, Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, North Dakota and Tennessee.

Disclosure: I received a free coupon and a prize pack from Yoplait through MyBlogSpark in exchange for posting this information. The prize pack is the same one that I am giving away to one of my readers.

Update: The coupon can be found on the Safeway store site’s coupon page. For Tom Thumb, it’s here.

Become a fan of Safeway Stores (includes Tom Thumb) on Facebook and then return to the Facebook page on Monday (12/7) to load a coupon for a free box of Clementines with a purchase of $25+ at the store.

I was thrilled to see this mentioned on Twitter by Frugal, Freebies & Deals because I signed up to take Clementines to my daughter’s class party in two weeks. But then I started thinking the coupon might have some rules attached to it. I tried to find more information, but this is all I could come up with (nothing is confirmed):

1. The coupon may be limited to “25,000” (could possibly be the first 25,000 loaded coupons or the first 25,000 people to make a $25+ purchase)

2. The coupon may only be good on December 8 (or perhaps there is a similar promotion taking place on the 8th).

3. I do not know if the $25 purchase is after coupons or before.

4. You need to have a registered Safeway card (includes Tom Thumb, Randalls, etc.) and will need your card number when you register for the coupon on Monday.

I haven’t blogged about my shopping trips to Tom Thumb (a Safeway store) in a while because I have been stocking up at Kroger mega sales and haven’t had time to hit multiple grocery stores like I used to.

Over the last few weeks, I have received email from individuals representing Safeway/Tom Thumb. They wanted to let me know about Tom Thumb’s new lower prices and have offered me gift cards to see how far I can stretch my grocery budget.

I haven’t time to do a major shopping trip to Tom Thumb yet, so I cannot share how I did, but I plan to do it soon. I have, however, stopped in Tom Tom Thumb on a few occasions to pick up a couple of things on each stop.

The latest trip was to purchase Kid Cuisine frozen dinners for my daughter. Tom Thumb has always had the highest price for this item of all the stores where I shop, but I noticed the product had a sale tag that stated if I bought three in one transaction, I could get them for $1.99 each. Since I had a $1.00/1 Shortcuts.com coupon loaded on my Tom Thumb card, I was able to get them for less than what they cost at Target or Kroger.

This got my attention, and I plan to revisit Tom Thumb more regularly over the next few weeks, and I will share what I discover.

While at Tom Thumb to get the Kid Cuisine, I spotted brochures about their 2-hour turkey. I don’t cook whole turkeys because it seems so overwhelming to me, but two hours sounds do-able.

If you’re like me and wait until the last minute to get the items together for a meal, or if you find you’re short a few items, here are the best deals I see at Tom Thumb for Thanksgiving meal-related items (good through 11/26):